


past lives

by firstaudrina



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: M/M, post episode: 3x06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 12:04:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14496603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: “Alexander?” he tries again, and again there’s a disgruntled noise, but this time it draws Magnus’ gaze down to the space between couch and coffee table, where Alec appears to be laying. Magnus crosses the room and looks down at him, one eyebrow quirked. “Was happy hour very happy, then?”





	past lives

**Author's Note:**

> I know the sneak peek has already jossed this, but I really wanted to write some Drunk Alec and Real Talk after last ep! So here it is: an alternative coda to 3x06, "A Window into an Empty Room."

Magnus generally unlocks his door with a touch, skimming past the complication of keys in favor of something much more secure, but he returns tonight to find someone has beaten him to it. That can only mean one thing.

He turns the handle and pokes his head in first to be safe, warier of demons now that he knows at least one managed to escort herself into his apothecary. But still optimism wins out and he calls, “Alexander?”

A very familiar grumble echoes from the direction of the couch. Magnus’ shoulders ease, all his tense feelings temporarily evaporating. He steps inside and shuts the door behind himself but, bizarrely, cannot see Alec anywhere in the sitting room.

“Alexander?” he tries again, and again there’s a disgruntled noise, but this time it draws Magnus’ gaze down to the space between couch and coffee table, where Alec appears to be laying. Magnus crosses the room and looks down at him, one eyebrow quirked. “Was happy hour very happy, then?”

Alec returns the look with a pathetic but nevertheless very surly expression. “I was gonna sit,” he says. “And I missed it. So I just…stayed here.”

“I can see that,” Magnus says. “Would you like a hand?”

“Would you like to give me a hand?”

“Do you think that’s cute? It’s not.” But of course Magnus extends both hands to grasp Alec’s and pull him upright, which leads to an unsteady little stumble and finally the couch. “How was your mother?”

Alec waves that away. Annoyingly, he does indeed look very cute: inebriation has exaggerated the natural elasticity of his features, so his furrowed brow is deeper and pout even poutier. It seems he has not yet given up on this morning’s sulkiness; after being battered around by a possessed parabatai, Magnus is in no mood to handle it. “She’s all new,” Alec says finally. “It’s good, I think.”

“I’m glad,” Magnus says. “Now, there’s something I have to tell you and I can’t imagine you’ll be able to process it very effectively in your current state, so if you’ll allow me to make you a quick sobering solution —”

Alec interrupts by taking hold of Magnus’ jacket — low, somewhere between the lapels and the hem so that his knuckles press into the leather of Magnus’ belt underneath. “No,” he says. “I want to talk.”

“And we will, darling, but I think you’ll want to —”

“You only call me darling when you’re being condescending.”

“You’re making it very easy to condescend to you right now.”

Alec’s lips twitch but he keeps his face very stern instead of smiling. Then he says, “I was talking to a man at the bar,” and Magnus’ stomach twists. 

“Why are you telling me this?”

Alec is confused. “Because it —” He shakes his head. “ _Talking_. I was talking. Just talking.”

Magnus rolls his eyes. “Oh, really, were you _talking_? I hadn’t heard.”

Alec pulls him forward another few inches so he can rest his forehead against Magnus’ stomach, eyes closed; despite himself, Magnus allows fingers to land on the crown of Alec’s head and card through his hair. “Everyone likes to tell me,” Alec says, “how impossible it is for us. Because we’re so different.”

Magnus lifts a thoughtful eyebrow. “You may have been talking to this man but it sounds like he was _talking_ ,” his injects a suggestive note into his voice, “to you.”

Alec snorts. “Maybe,” he says. 

“We _are_ different,” Magnus notes after a moment. “I’m not sure which part of that is a surprise. The fanciest thing you owned before we met was a denim button-down. That alone is enough to prove we’re on different stratospheres.” 

Magnus can feel the pull of Alec’s smile before he shifts back, meeting Magnus’ eyes with the exact same surprising openness that had attracted Magnus to him in the first place. “I’m sorry we fought.”

Magnus cups his face, smoothes a touch over his brow, and instantly forgets all manner of troubles weighing on him — the bruises he’d gained from being flung across the alley, his guilt over selling that potion to that woman, his anxiety at the possibility of Alec finding him too complicated after all and choosing to go after a more mortal lover. It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened to him. “I’m sorry, too.”

God, being in love was wild. How had he gone so long without it?

“I just can’t think about anything else,” Alec admits. 

Magnus sighs; there are a thousand things he’d rather dwell on than this. “Can’t you try?”

“No,” Alec says bluntly. “I _love_ you, Magnus. I think — How —” He stops and huffs, like he’s frustrated he can’t get himself in order. When he starts again, his words slur together a little with intoxication and intensity, though even at the best of times his accent can skew his enunciation. “I know it’s been — it’s been two months, less, but I don’t feel like this about anybody. Not my parents, not Izzy, not Jace, not Max. I start to miss you the second I step out the door in the morning.”

Magnus tilts Alec’s head back by the hair, not rough but not entirely gentle. “So miss me,” he says. “Feel everything you feel for me. But feel it right now. Don’t worry about a future no one can predict.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because I’ve lived enough lifetimes for a dozen people,” Magnus says, a touch of frustration bleeding into his voice. “You don’t want to hear that, I know. But I’ve seen people get old. I’ve watched them die young. I’ve been left in all the ways a person can be left, voluntary or not. I’ve lost. I don’t want to worry about it with you. I just want to be _here_. Right here.”

Alec’s upturned face is serious and thoughtful before he abruptly pulls Magnus down to him, resulting in a painful tangle in which Magnus’ knee narrowly avoids striking Alec somewhere much too tender. Thanks to those Shadowhunter reflexes, Alec is able to catch Magnus firmly by the waist and steady him, but Magnus still winces when Alec’s fingers unintentionally dig into his sore spots. 

“What is it?” Alec asks immediately. 

“I told you we had more pressing concerns than the next fifty years of domestic bliss,” Magnus says. “I’ve had quite the night.”

Alec frowns, and he’s already peeling Magnus’ coat off his shoulders and yanking his shirt untucked so he can look at the graying bruises studding Magnus’ golden skin. “What happened?” he demands. “Who did this?”

Magnus ought to get on with it, but the fierceness in Alec’s expression has him seeking a kiss instead. Magnus’ palms smooth over Alec’s cheeks as he cups his face and kisses him searchingly, tasting citrus and whiskey on Alec’s tongue. There is a petty part of Magnus that sort of likes that Alec left this apartment in a huff this morning and ended up downing drink after drink to soothe himself, even if it also meant he might have chatted up curious men with too many opinions. 

Alec leans his forehead against Magnus’ and breathes. “Tell me what could have ever prepared me for you,” he says. “Did all those lifetimes prepare you for this?”

“Nothing,” Magnus says, and kisses him again because Alec is his to kiss. “No, they didn’t.”

“Come on.” Alec gives him a nudge. “Let’s go take care of that.”

Magnus gets out of his lap and helps him to his feet, though Alec appears to get drunker upon standing; perhaps it has something to do with the altitude. Magnus has to act as a crutch all the way over to his workroom, though he’d hardly complain about having Alec’s warm weight against him no matter the situation. Once there, Magnus sets about blending together a sobering tincture while Alec locates one of the many healing salves he has in stock. Alec slips a hand under Magnus’ shirt to rub it into his skin, ointment cold but fingers warm. The scent of lemon fills the air.

When Alec is done, he hooks his chin over Magnus’ shoulder to watch his progress and listens silently as Magnus gets him up to speed. Then he takes his medicine without complaint, eyes clearing and face seeming to refine as self-control straightens his spine again. Magnus almost misses the sprawl. 

He accepts the small glass back from Alec and can’t resist saying, “Perhaps I should put this in my little box, hm?”

Alec cringes and presses the heel of his hand to his forehead. “I did apologize for that, right?”

“You did indeed.” A little smile curves Magnus’ mouth. “And it was accepted.”

“But?”

Magnus doesn’t do anything so graceless as fidget, but a ripple of hesitancy travels from his shoulders to hips. He crosses his arms and leans back against the table. “It’s only — those things mean something to me. I didn’t appreciate you making them into your bitter punchline.” 

They were just things, just mementos. A box of shadows. But every one of them stood in for a person Magnus had loved, and they had each been as singular to him then as Alec is now. Magnus can understand how that might make Alec feel interchangeable, but they were all distinct to him. His past was not an albatross. It had made him who he is. 

“I don’t appreciate you throwing my lack of experience in my face,” Alec says. 

“It’s not that,” Magnus argues softly. “I don’t mean to make it seem like a hindrance. It’s just a fact that you are dealing with things for the first time that I have already thought quite a lot about. That’s all. We could talk this in circles for another four hundred years or we could just _be_ together.”

Alec always meets his eyes so directly, and this time the look is drawn tight. “I don’t want you to love anyone else after me,” he says. “Is that selfish?”

There is the strangest fluttering sensation in Magnus’ chest. “Yes,” he says, reaching for Alec again. “Incredibly.”

That shouldn’t please him as much as it does, but he’s never been anyone’s only one. Perhaps he is a little selfish himself. Only a little, of course.

The soft press of lip to lip blossoms slowly into a kiss that’s more open, more expressive. Magnus drapes his arms around Alec’s shoulders and Alec sinks into him so much he has to rest a hand on the tabletop, crushing dried herbs and flowers under his fingers. Magnus strokes the hair at the nape of Alec’s neck, drags the kiss along his jaw and throat. “Often,” Magnus says, “when partners begin to bring up my immortality… It’s usually a prelude to them deciding they would rather not be with me.”

Alec lifts his head so he can study Magnus for a moment. “Not a possibility,” he says simply.

Whatever Magnus feels in response to that is not enough to stop him from warning, “The faster we go the quicker you realize.”

A little crease appears between Alec’s brows that Magnus would like to kiss, and often does in the early hours when Alec has just woken up and his eyes are still screwed shut in rebellion. “Have you not been listening this whole time, or…?”

Surprised, Magnus laughs. Some of his tension eases, but his hands on Alec tighten. “I suppose not,” he says. “Tell me again, maybe it’ll sink in.”


End file.
